


bubblemakers

by cleardishwashers



Category: Ocean's 8 (2018), Ocean's Eleven Trilogy (Movies)
Genre: Broken Bones, Character Death Fix, F/F, Fake Character Death, Fix-It of Sorts, M/M, Multi, Post-Canon, Vomiting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-14
Updated: 2019-09-14
Packaged: 2020-10-18 04:41:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,757
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20633246
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cleardishwashers/pseuds/cleardishwashers
Summary: deb just wanted to have a nice lunch date with lou. this somehow means that she gets to find out that her not-so-dead brother is. well. not so dead.





	bubblemakers

Debbie has  _ fantastic _ taste. She is also very good at knowing what Lou likes. These two skills (and with Lou’s ever-changing fancies, it really is a skill) combine to make a pretty fucking great lunch date, replete with Lou’s variety of smiles— every single one genuine, thank you very much. It’s an achievement that Debbie is very proud of, seeing as one of the only things that people like her and Lou are for sure is liars, and fake smiles adorn their lips much too easily. But Debbie knows when Lou’s grins are real and when they’re fake, and so far, she’s 82-0 on the smile count.

Debbie’s gaze unfocuses for a moment as she wonders if she can break 100 by the time their (admittedly very long) lunch is over.

Outside the window of the very fancy French restaurant that Debbie and Lou are dining in, two men in tan trench coats stand on the sidewalk, holding bubblemakers. The bubbles float leisurely along Fifth Avenue, until harried commuters walk into them and they pop, leaving the tiniest of soap flecks on their coats.

If Debbie had been raised in a regular house (not one purchased with stolen money) by a regular family (not one that conned their way through everything) into a regular life (not one where she pays for very expensive lunches with stolen cash), she might scream. She might scream, she might jump, she might spit her soup all over Lou (who would undoubtedly wonder where her Debbie had gone, and who this soup-spitting loon who’d never heard of faking your own death came from). She might blink, or rub her eyes, or do anything to acknowledge the fact that her dead brother is standing not twenty feet away from her.

If Debbie Ocean was raised in a regular house by a regular family into a regular life, her dead brother would probably just be her brother.

She does not acknowledge the two men— not to them, anyway— and she continues sipping her soup, burning with the fury of one whose fantastic gag had been stolen by a shitty, death-faking brother. “Lou,” she says calmly, even a bit smilingly, really. She looks only at her partner and she does not look outside. “Lou, those assholes stole our thing.”

Lou’s eyebrows pinch, just the tiniest bit, and then she turns around to look at the window. When Debbie looks back out, the two assholes are gone. Not a tan trench in sight (only metaphorically, of course. This is New York City in the middle of fall. There’s tan trench coats everywhere).

“I might actually kill them,” Debbie says. She stands, and she digs a wad of cash from her pocket, and she slaps it onto the table. Lou stands too. They walk out of the restaurant, giving off no indication that anything is wrong— because why would anything be wrong? Lou gives them a fake smile, and just like that, Debbie’s streak is broken. Of course Danny has to fuck with everything.

Debbie spots her brother’s idiot partner right away (he should really think about not wearing shirts that are the polyester equivalent of neon reflectors). “Rusty!” she calls, wondering where he stuffed the trench coat (in a sewer, most likely, because every trash can in the vicinity is overflowing) and when he amassed so many more grey hairs, because didn’t she just see him two months ago? He turns around on his heel, slowly, leisurely, like he has all the goddamn time in the world. He’s got the same sort of effortless cool as Lou, except without the hard-on for motorbikes and without the semblance of emotional stability.

“Deb—”

Debbie can tell that Lou is raising her eyebrows and grinning like she knows exactly what’s about to go down, because she  _ does _ know. “Don’t you dare  _ Deb _ me,  _ Robert. _ You stole our fucking— Where is he?”

Rusty winces almost imperceptibly at the use of his legal first name, but he gamely indicates across the street, where Debbie’s fucking shitbag of a brother is sitting on a bench, slouched over a newspaper. Debbie doesn’t know what emotion, anger or snark, to let bubble to the surface first— all she knows is that it sure as hell won’t be relief.

Lou has already begun to forge her way through the metal maze of cars and trucks and buses, somehow managing to blend in despite her incredibly ostentatious outfit, and Debbie follows, not blending quite so well. She shoulders past coffee-toting businessmen and harried mothers and overeager tourists in I ♥ NY shirts and when she gets to the park bench, she finds that the positions have switched— Lou is now lounging and Danny is standing. He looks sheepish.  _ Good. _

Rusty slinks up to her brother a moment later, making it officially a party. They’re standing even closer than they normally do, which means they’re basically spooning.

“So you two got your shit together,” Debbie says, making a small allowance to the  _ no showing relief _ rule.

“As did you,” Danny says, nodding to both her and Lou. Debbie feels a small flare of pride—  _ yes, we did, and we didn’t wait till we were practically senior citizens to do it— _ and an even bigger flare of anger along with it.

“I’m happy for you two,” Debbie says, and she means it.

She also means it when she slams her fist across her brother’s face, sending him to the ground and knocking the grin right off. Lou smirks at her, and the small flare of pride doubles in size. She is 85-1 on the smile count. The throng of citizens part around them.

When Debbie was five and Danny was eight, the two of them built a treehouse.  _ Built _ maybe isn’t the right word—  _ cobbled _ is more like it. They hammered together sheets of iron from the junkyard and planks of wood from the old kitchen cabinets and God knows what else, and in the end they came up with a dilapidated heap that stood barely three feet tall. Debbie had been so proud of it, and then she’d come home from school one day to see that Danny and two of his friends had claimed it as their own. So she’d done the only logical thing and pried some of the nails out of the floor of the treehouse, and when Danny and his friends stepped foot in the treehouse the next day, the old wooden boards gave way, sending Charlie home with a litany of Band-Aids, Dave to the Oceans’ freezer for frozen peas, and Danny to the ER with a broken arm. The ashen pallor that had taken over her brother’s face had chilled Debbie to the bone. And then Danny had grinned, all smug and unbearable (even with a fucking broken bone), and a thrill of vindication had shot through Debbie upon the sight of her brother’s mangled arm.

Danny grins now, too, blood trickling out of his nose as Rusty pulls him to his feet, and Debbie feels that same vindication shoot through her once more. “You deserved that,” Lou says.

“You kinda did,” Rusty says.

Danny holds up his hands. “Don’t gang up on me. Jesus.”

“It’s true, though,” Debbie says. Her hand smarts a little, but she doesn’t dare look down at it. Her brother and Rusty will notice, and then her whole tough moment will be gone.

Danny squints at her for a second, then at Lou, then he whips his head around to look at Rusty, then it’s back to Debbie. “Yeah, I guess.”

Whatever shell of indifference that had protected Debbie suddenly cracks, and the sight of her brother threatens to break through her defenses, like a shiv pressed to her side.

When she was just barely eighteen and Danny had only recently made the jump to twenty-one, she and Lou got arrested for underage drinking and possession (the first and only arrest on her record, at least until Claude). She and Lou had been high on the taste of freedom (and some very potent edibles), with nobody to tell them what to do and nobody to try and stop them. They’d had to pump Debbie’s stomach, and Lou puked in the police car twice (some had landed in Debbie’s hair, but she was too drunk to care, especially since Lou had been pressed up beside her like she was the only solid thing in the world), and Debbie hadn’t known who in the goddamn hell to use her one phone call on, because she would’ve called Lou but Lou was right next to her, still looking faintly green. She hadn’t known a lot of numbers by heart, really, but she had known a few. And before she knew it, her fingers had dialled and her brother had picked up the phone in just over two rings. “Danny,” she’d said, barely able to talk without a wave of nausea sweeping over her, “I’m in fucking— goddamn, what is it— oh! Uh. Cambridge PD. I think I need bail money?” She’d hung up— stupid, she’ll admit it now— without getting an answer, and then she and Lou had passed out in the holding cell, clinging to each other like a couple of goddamn life preservers. She hadn’t thought her brother would show up, much less bring Rusty along for the ride, but at 6:30-something in the morning, the two of them appeared, messy-haired and bleary-eyed. She’d woken Lou up and they’d walked out of jail and they’d resolved to never do that again, and by 6:50-something, somewhere in between the waking and the walking and the resolving, Danny and Rusty had gone. Six months later, with seventeen grand in hundreds under her belt, Debbie had sent her brother a letter that left her with seven grand instead. Danny had sent back a package containing a half-empty bottle of Jack Daniels.

Debbie throws her arms around her brother like she did when she was seven and he was ten and she’d broken his other arm, on accident this time. He returns the hug almost automatically, like he did when they were both kids and she would get scared during thunderstorms. She squeezes him tighter than she should, tighter than she would if he weren’t such a huge bitch, but it’s a hug nonetheless. “I’m glad you’re not dead,” she says, “but if you fake your death again and neglect to tell me for two fucking years, I  _ will _ shiv you and leave you to bleed out on the sidewalk.”

**Author's Note:**

> thank you so much for reading! come scream at me about ocean's eleven/eight on @cleardishwashers (tumblr). kudos/comments/criticism always appreciated!!


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